ELLIE GA’s PROJECT ON TARA: THE CATALOGUE OF THE LOST

By Ellie Ga

Onboard the Tara, my project will be to see how I can measure the poetics of everyday life--to document and archive the small gestures and routines that not only make an expedition possible but also become the fabric/structure/tempo (?) of time passing, of life being lived. Of particular interest to me is how one communicates extreme conditions such as silence, darkness and cold? In what form? The audio dispatches I will be sending from the ship will attempt to provide a narrative of these extreme conditions which undoubtedly shape the everyday life of the expedition. Among the materials I will be bringing with me: hand-made Pinhole camera, Super-8 camera, digital camera, ruler, compass, pencils, Polaroid Camera, sound recorder/mic, hand held slide viewer and a collection of 35mm slides of art from New York University’s Art History department.”

“The Catalogue of the Lost began during my artist residency at the Explorers Club in NYC. For the past year and a half I researched early expeditions to the Arctic. My imagination was captured by missing pieces of early exploration–lost places, people, and concepts. In particular, I became intrigued by the first attempts at photography in the Arctic: the successes and failures to document “the unknown.” The Catalogue has been both a romantic tribute to human desire to ascertain terra incognita, and an examination of the imperial/political impulses behind this romanticism. Combining historical and imaginary footage, the project has taken the form of artists’ books, photographic installations, and public slide show performances. Having no experience of the Arctic, my project relied on broad strokes: research, history books, vicariously living through other people’s accounts.

BIO

Ellie Ga received her MFA in photography from Hunter College in New York City in 2005. She has been a guest artist at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and has also been an artist-in-residence at Women’s Studio Workshop (New York) and The Newark Museum of Art (Newark, New Jersey).  Recently her work has been shown in New York at the Swiss Institute-Contemporary Art, The Rubin Museum of Art, The Newark Museum of Art, and in Europe at the Museen for Gegenwartkunst (Basel, Switzerland) and Montanaberlin (Berlin, Germany). Ellie has curated events for PS1-Contemporary Art/MOMA, the Explorers Club (New York City), and was a co-organizer of the storefront artists’ project space Year. Her artist’s books are in the collections of MOMA, NYPL, Yale, Brown and UCLA universities. She teaches art in the New York City and Newark public schools.